The human genome is a veritable digital library of information that includes millions of regulatory elements and the expansive classes of long and short noncoding RNAs. These noncoding sequences represent a rich source of sequence variation (eg, SNPs), but the role such sequence variants play in the control of gene expression or noncoding RNA function is poorly understood. Many noncoding sequence variants will prove to... more »

Many biological models developed to date are based on studies using heterogeneous cell populations. For example, ChIP-Seq studies have shown that RNA Pol II is frequently paused near promotes and that in stem cells, developmentally poised genes are controlled by bivalent enhancers. These studies are largely based on statistical analyses of average ChIP-Seq reads from millions of cells. Earlier biochemical analysis of... more »